The climate change skeptics page is now the climate
change deniers page. The address is now
skepdic.com/climatedeniers. A link was added to
Greenfyer's take on what some are calling "climategate," the
hacking of a computer belonging to the Climate Research Unit at the
University of East Anglia in Britain and posting hundreds of e-mails
and other documents. The deniers are so hot and venting so much
carbon monoxide and methane that global warming is said to be
accelerating at an unprecedented pace and the axis of the Earth has
shifted two degrees. Jim
Lippard provides a sober view of the affair.

I posted two items regarding the story
of Rom Houben who allegedly began communicating in sophisticated
prose after 23 years of paralysis and misdiagnosis: one post is on the
facilitated
communication page; the other is a new entry I've cleverly
called the clever
Linda phenomenon, named after Rom's "helper," Linda Wouters. The former is about the incompetent media
coverage, including the interviews with medical experts who
obviously know nothing about facilitated communication, the
ideomotor effect,
or the Clever Hans
phenomenon. The latter is also about the incompetent media
coverage and how easy it is to fool a) oneself and b) others, as
long as you are completely ignorant of
basic
cognitive, perceptual, and affective biases.

(Let me take a moment to plug the new
Institute for Science in
Medicine. One of ISM's purposes is to "oppose legislation that
seeks to erode the science-based standard of care and expose the
public to potentially fraudulent, worthless, or harmful medical
practices or products." ISM's first
press
release addresses provisions in current Congressional health
care reform bills that require reimbursement for "ineffective and
potentially unsafe care."
Stephen Novella and Orac
have more.)

I've posted an essay,
Defending Falsehoods, which tries to explain why some people
will defend the palpably untrue to their dying breath.

What's the harm? has several new posts: Uganda proposes jail
for homosexuals and death for aggravated homosexuality. A 16-year-old Sudanese
Christian girl has been lashed 50 times for wearing an "indecent"
knee-length skirt. Saudi Arabia sentences to death alleged witch
doctors, fortunetellers, and black magicians. Evangelist Tony Alamo
was sentenced to 175 years for sex crimes against children. A
Sacramento preacher is accused of fleecing his flock. An adulterer
was stoned to death in Somalia. And, the offspring of delusional
products such as the
Quadro Tracker, the
DKL Lifeguard, and the
TKS-2000, is being used by Iraq's security forces. The latest
junk piece is called the ADE 651.

Thanks to the Herschel telescope scientists are observing the
death throes of the biggest star known to science, VY Canis Majoris,
which is 30-40 times as massive as our Sun. VY Canis Majoris, a
red supergiant,
is in the constellation Canis Major and has been recorded by
astronomers for at least 200 years. It is some 4,500 light-years
from Earth and could explode as a supernova at any time.

At the other end of the spectrum, the
Large Hadron Collider was
turned on and the world didn't end. (Another failed prediction
for Ben Radford's list.)
Next on the schedule is an intense commissioning phase aimed at
increasing the beam intensity and accelerating the beams. According
to a CERN press release: "All being well, by Christmas, the LHC
should reach 1.2 TeV per beam, and have provided good quantities of
collision data for the experiments’ calibrations."

"At last month's Society for
Neuroscience meeting in Chicago, researcher Jack Gallant presented
the results of an experiment in which a person's brain activity was
used to recreate what the person was watching when the activity
occurred. Researchers already use brain scans to reconstruct still
images, but Gallant's ability to play back moving images takes us
much closer to some freaky sci-fi scenarios." So reads
one account of Gallant's work.
I'm not a sci-fi fan, but I'm told this kind of stuff occurs in
Strange Days, The Final Cut, and the sci-fi series Farscape.

Washington state has barred religious
and other nongovernmental displays inside buildings at the Capitol
grounds in Olympia. Last year, a Nativity display at the capitol was
matched by a nearby display mocking religion. There will still be a
state-sponsored holiday tree inside the Capitol rotunda, however.*
A few years ago, our celebrity governor here in California didn't
spare a giant tree for the Capitol in Sacramento, but our tree was
deemed energy-efficient. The lights were powered by a small hydrogen fuel cell system
and are energy-efficient LED bulbs, which use about 15% as much
energy as incandescent bulbs to provide equivalent light for human
vision.*

In 2008, the U.S. Transportation
Security Administration's (TSA) Screening Passengers by
Observational Techniques (SPOT) team pulled aside for special
interrogation some 98,805 people at 161 airports. 99.992 % were
released and allowed to continue their travels. Of the 813 people
who were arrested, how many were terrorists? Probably none. How many
were guilty of "looking like a terrorist"? All we know is that the
"experts" are looking at our facial expressions and body language to
make their decision on whom to yank from the line at airport
security stations. $3.1 million was spent to arrest a few people for
such things as possession of
drugs or having fake IDs.

The
great guru-buster is gone but the need for his work goes on.
Tapaswi Palden Dorje (Ram
Bahadur Bomjan) has allegedly gone
without
food or water since May 16 or November 6 (accounts vary), 2005,
while he sits meditating. Given his fasting habits, the young
inediate (b. 19/April/1990) has no need
for bathroom breaks. His devotees say Palden Dorje is promoting
world peace. If so, he might have to step it up a notch and begin
flying while shape-shifting into forest animals because the world doesn't
seem to be cooperating.

Business executive Tim
Nicholson won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was
unfairly dismissed for his "green" views. A judge ruled that
environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and
philosophical beliefs.*
About a week later, Alan Power, a police worker who believes he was sacked
because he believes psychics can help solve criminal investigations,
went to court to defend his right to legal protection from religious
discrimination. According to The Independent,
employment specialist Judge Peter Russell said that psychic beliefs
are capable of being religious beliefs for the purpose of the
Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. The
BBC reports that belief in
ghosts must be treated with the same respect given religious
beliefs. I agree; they do deserve the same respect, namely, no
respect at all. By this
kind of logic, atheism could be considered a religious belief.
Anyway, Mr. Power lost his case. A tribunal ruled that he wasn't
dismissed unfairly; the tribunal ruled, however, that
his
views should be seen as a faith.

Another strange law in Britain is the
Digital Economy Bill, which
provides such things as £50,000 fines if someone in your house is
accused of file sharing.

The Organization of Islamic
Conference (OIC), a bloc of 56 Islamic states, has once again
proposed to the United Nations Human Rights Council that it outlaw
"defamation of religion" anywhere in the world. The OIC has made the
same proposal each year since 1999. The only religion named in the
motion is Islam. For once, secularists and religious groups agree in
opposing the non-binding motion.*According to the Center for
Inquiry, the language of the new proposal is copied from
Ireland's blasphemy law.

School districts around the world are
installing Internet filtering software from
Blue Coat,
an international corporation that describes itself as a leader in
"Application Delivery Network Technology." The Blue Coat WebFilter™
database "contains over fifteen million website ratings representing
billions of web pages, published in more than 50 languages, and
organized into 71
useful categories." As far as I can tell, the database just
rates the sites. It's up to the buyer to use whatever filters they
choose. Some school districts (Indianapolis,
for example) proudly print out a list of these categories and
present them as if they were their own and as blocked categories.
One of the categories is called Alternative Spirituality/Occult and
reads:

Sites that promote and provide
information on religions such as Wicca, Witchcraft or Satanism.
Occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other
form of mysticism are represented here. Includes sites that
endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources
to affect or influence real events through the use of spells,
incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes
sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events.

Unexplained events? As
Ed Brayton wrote: "What a
bizarre amalgamation of unrelated things that is." Or, lol, as the
students might text.

Another category is called LGBT and
covers

Sites that provide information
regarding, support, promote, or cater to one’s sexual orientation
or gender identity including but not limited to lesbian, gay,
bi-sexual, and transgender sites. This category does not include
sites that are sexually gratuitous in nature which would typically
fall under the Pornography category.

A 2008 law that created
Christian-themed license plates sailed through the South Carolina
state Legislature but was ruled unconstitutional by federal judge
Cameron McGowan Currie. Stating the obvious, the judge noted that
the law "amounts to state endorsement not only of religion in
general, but of a specific sect in particular."*
The law was initiated by Lt. Gov. André Bauer (R) after a similar
effort failed in Florida. Bauer called the decision "judicial
activism" and said it "clearly discriminates against persons of
faith." He's going to ask the state Attorney General to appeal the
ruling "because it is time that people stand up for their beliefs.
Enough is enough."

Joe Mack, director of the office of
public policy for the South Carolina Baptist Convention, believes
that the Christian-themed license plate is "a protected First
Amendment right."

Americans United for Separation of
Church and State filed a lawsuit challenging the plates on behalf of
three South Carolina pastors, a rabbi, and the Hindu American
Foundation. Barry Lynn, AU's executive director, said: "Government
must never be allowed to express favored treatment for one faith
over others."

This minute the award goes to the
anonymous huckster behind
Magnets4Energy. It seems incredible, but there are still people
claiming that they have a device that will allow you to have free
electricity for the rest of your life. This guy (who must remain
anonymous, he says) also claims that the government and the power
companies know about this device and have conspired to keep the
public ignorant. This guy has the video to prove that what he says
is true. To truly understand how much contempt this guy has for his
potential customers, consider his pitch: "Understanding the slow
deterioration of Earth and thinking back on the past 30 years of my
life watching you being robbed by greed is why I’m ‘spilling the
beans’ on Uncle Sam." He's not giving anything away, though. For a
mere $47, he'll share his secret, plus he'll send you his booklet on
how to run your car on water. But you better hurry. He warns: "I
reserve the right to stop selling at anytime!"

For those who are looking for others
to take down young Earth
Christian evangelist Ray Comfort's latest stunt, a website has been
set up just for you. It's called
Don't Diss Darwin and
it's run by Eugenie Scott's National Center for Science Education.
In case you haven't heard, Comfort is distributing free copies of
Darwin's Origin of Species on college campuses. These copies,
however, have a long introduction by Comfort that is "full of
mistakes, half truths, untruths, muddled logic, old creationist
arguments, misleadingly excerpted quotations, and ill-framed
analogies—plus a good dose of fire and brimstone at the end."

Comfort's traveling buddy in
Jesus,
actor Kirk
Cameron, is famous for claiming that evolutionists think that a
member of one species gave birth to a member of a new species
"millions of times." If evolution is correct, say Comfort and
Cameron, then there should be transitional species like the
crocoduck.
No, there shouldn't. No evolutionist thinks any member of one
species gave birth to a new species. If you're going to oppose
something, you should at least spend some time trying to understand
what it is you oppose. If Ray and Cameron really want to understand
transitional fossils, I suggest they start by reading
Richard
Dawkins or my article on the
missing link,
which has a reading list preacher Ray should go through before
embarrassing himself further.

I thought the Roman Catholic Church
had moved into the 19th century and no longer held that little
devils are literally invading human beings and taking over their
thoughts and actions. Brain disorders, not literal demons, are
behind so-called "mental" illnesses, aren't they? Didn't some Pope
acknowledge that? I guess not. At a recent Catholic Medical
Association conference, newly installed president Dr. Leonard Rybak
declared that one of the high points of the meeting was a talk by
Father Thomas J. Euteneuer on suffering caused by demonic possession
and the healing power of
exorcism.

“It wasn’t just hearsay. It was based on his
personal experience as an exorcist.” When his time to answer
questions from the audience was up, Father Euteneuer invited those
who still had further questions for him to step outside into the
lobby and he would take them. A number of physicians, and others in
health care took him up on the offer, relating instances which they
have encountered in dealing with patients.*

You would think that fear of demons
snaring your immortal soul for eternal damnation would be laughed at
in the 21st century, but that is
not the case in Catholic
strongholds.

"Take any random program to clothe
and house the poor in your city, and there's a good chance it's
being sponsored by the local Catholic church," writes the
Amateur Scientist.
Furthermore, a study on clergy sexual abuse, conducted by the John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, confirms that homosexuality is not
a predictor of pedophilia. Even though the majority of rape victims
by Catholic clergy have been boys, the percentage of rapists who are
also homosexuals isn't statistically significant. "This is good
news," says the Amateur Scientist, "since a huge number of ignorant
people believe homosexuals (especially homosexual men) are prone to
pedophilia, and that the priesthood offers a veritable boy buffet.
As a result of this study, the church probably won't begin to
consider homosexuality a factor in selecting priests. Another
positive from this study? Incidents of clergy sexual abuse seem to
be on a sharp decline since the mid '80s."

On the other hand, the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops released an "Ethical and Religious
Directive" that bans "any Catholic hospital, nursing home, or
hospice program from removing feeding tubes or ending palliative
procedures of any kind, even when the individual has an advance
directive to guide their end-of-life care." The Bishops’ directive
claims that "patient suffering is redemptive and brings the
individual closer to Christ."*

Brazzil
Magazine reports that senator Arthur Virgílio, leader of the
opposition party PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy), requested the
Brazilian senate to summon a psychic service to determine what
caused a massive blackout that left 60 million people in the dark
for several hours when 18 of Brazil's 26 states were without power.
The senate agreed. Allies of the Lula administration criticized the
move, saying that the opposition "has lost its mind."

Energy Minister Edison Lobao said the
blackout on November 10th was caused by heavy rain, lightning, and
strong winds that made transformers on a high-voltage transmission
line short circuit, which led to two other lines going down as part
of an automatic safety mechanism.*

Virgilio isn't buying it. He claims
that nobody really knows what happened. "And since no one knows
let's call the Cacique Cobra Coral (Coral Snake Chief)
foundation to have the opinion of a psychic, since science and the
public administration are not able to answer our doubts."

Cacique Cobra Coral has a department
of forecasting and changing the weather. Just in case the psychics
can't get through to the psychic underground, twenty experts in
energy and weather are also being summoned by the senate.

Playing for Change: Peace
Through Music is the perfect DVD gift for those who share
the view that music is one of humankind's best uniters. The sounds
of street musicians are brilliantly mixed with those of professional
musicians from around the globe to provide a joyous experience in a
troubled world. A CD is also
available.